The Orthodox population is growing even faster than earlier reports from the Pew Research Center’s recent survey of American Jews suggested.

A new analysis of data from Pew finds that 27% of Jews younger than 18 live in Orthodox households. That’s a dramatic jump from Jews aged 18 to 29, only 11% of whom are Orthodox.

“Orthodox birthrates in just the last few years have been soaring,” said Jewish sociologist Steven M. Cohen, who requested the new data from Pew. “The sky is falling for the rest of the population.”

Previously published Pew data suggested that growth among the Orthodox was tempered by high dropout rates. No data was previously available on the proportion of Jewish children in Orthodox homes. The new figures show that the demographics of today’s Jewish children are radically different from those of even today’s Jewish young adults.

“There is a trend afoot, and in the next big population survey like this, we will see the beginning of a switch, whereby Orthodox Jews will eventually likely be the majority of American Jews,” said Sarah Bunin Benor, a professor of Jewish studies at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She, like Cohen, was a member of the Pew study’s advisory committee.

The Pew report was based on interviews with 3,500 Jews across the United States

In its analysis of its research, Pew described a gradual decrease in Jewish identity among the non-Orthodox, and a gradual rise in the overall proportion of Jews who identify as Orthodox. The study reported that 10% of Jews were Orthodox, just 2% higher than a roughly approximate study 10 years ago.

The new numbers give those findings a different cast.

As a proportion of the community, the Orthodox population more than doubles when you compare the demographic slice of middle-aged Jews with that of Jewish children based on the new data, according to Cohen. “Every year, the Orthodox population has been adding 5,000 Jews,” Cohen said. “The non-Orthodox population has been losing 10,000 Jews.”

The nationwide findings are in line with a 2012 study by UJA-Federation of New York. The study reported that 60% of Jewish children in the New York City area live in Orthodox homes.

Much of the growth appears to have come from the ultra-Orthodox including the Hasidic sectors. Though Pew did not break out age data for that subgrouping, the survey found that of the 10% of Jews who identified as Orthodox, only 3% said they were Modern Orthodox.

The factors driving down the non-Orthodox population were explored thoroughly in early coverage of Pew and discussed widely in the Forward and elsewhere.

Less noticed were the exceptionally high birthrates reported by Orthodox Jews.

Low levels of retention among older Jews who grew up Orthodox distracted from the birth rates and gave the impression that enough children were leaving Orthodoxy to keep the population relatively flat.

The new data challenges those assumptions.

High ultra-Orthodox birth rates are often visible in news media anecdotes For instance, when Israeli ultra-Orthodox rabbinical leader Yosef Sholom Elyashiv died in July 2012, he was said to have more than 1,000 living descendants.

Pew puts data to those anecdotes. The study’s numbers suggest that the Orthodox birthrate in the United States is far higher than that of most other religious groups. Pew found that Orthodox Jews averaged 4.1 children per adult [woman, I suspect], while America’s general public averages 2.2 children. The Orthodox number is higher than the average for Protestants (2.2) and Catholics (2.4). Hispanic Catholics (3.1) come close, but still fall short.

These birth rates, which are helping to push the demographics toward an Orthodox majority, remain confounding to outsiders.

“Orthodox life is very, very different than a conventional lifestyle,” said Alexander Rapaport, 35, a father of seven. Rapaport lives in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn’s Boro Park and runs the soup kitchen network Masbia.

He described a social structure designed to encourage and support large families — and that structure has apparently succeeded in more than doubling its share of the Jewish population in less than two decades.

Rapaport’s wife had the couple’s first child when Rapaport was 21. Their total of seven (so far) is about average for their community. Their latest, a 3-month-old, wears baby clothes passed down from a cousin born a year earlier.

“My wife didn’t buy any new stuff for my daughter,” Rapaport said. “My sister gave her all her stuff that she had for her daughter.”

Food, Rapaport said, is also inexpensive. “Most people in New York think of food, they think of eating out,” Rapaport said. In his community, it’s “chulent and gefilte fish eaten at home.”

Besides economizing and informal support networks, Orthodox communities rely on government aid programs to subsidize their child-heavy lifestyle.

In Rockland County, N.Y., the Hasidic village of New Square receives Section 8 housing subsidies at a higher rate than anywhere else in the region. In New Jersey, schools in the Orthodox city of Lakewood get more federally backed E-Rate telecom subsidies than schools in any other municipality. Half of the people living in the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, in Orange County, N.Y., are on food stamps; a third are on Medicaid.

Some of that government aid goes to cutting school prices. For secular parents, the price of private school can often be a factor in family planning. Religious school tuition could make having large numbers of children unfeasible, but ultra-Orthodox schools are inexpensive. Hasidic men contacted by the Forward reported that Hasidic families pay between $200 and $400 per month year-round for school and summer camp.

Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn cost $3,500 for the school year. Tuition to the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan begins at $34,000.

Large families, however, don’t only create burdens on the parents. Older children are often tasked with raising their younger siblings. The result, according to Lani Santo, executive director of Footsteps, which helps people leaving Orthodoxy, is that a disproportionate number of their members are the eldest in their families.

A survey of 70 Footsteps members found that 30% were the oldest of their siblings.

“The oldest children are burdened with a lot of the responsibility of taking care of younger children, and that could lead to resentment,” Santo said.

That could be a factor in the Orthodox dropout rates, which remain substantial.

According to Pew, among Jews aged 18–29 who grew up Orthodox, 17% say they are no longer Orthodox.

One thing to keep in mind in reading about American Jewish numbers is that the study of Jewish demographics in the U.S. is a fraught field. In contrast to Israel, where the government invests heavily in collecting and analyzing demographic trends, since the late 1950s the U.S. government hasn't been allowed to count anything that would be terribly useful in identifying Jews.

There is plenty of private money and talent to do the job, but the various critics, nit-pickers, and interested parties who want to put thumbs on the scale are also world-class. So, publication of survey results tend to lead to recriminations and spin, such as the early 2000s survey that caused a huge rumpus among Jewish organizations before everybody more or less agreed to forget it ever happened.

67 comments:

Anonymous
said...

How are Orthodox Jews in comparison with secular Jews on the National Question and immigration?

I think the Orthodox Jews are more conservative in the temperamental and political senses as well as the religious sense. I believe they vote Republican more often than their secular counterparts as well.

Is their conservative solidarity limited to Israel and fellow Jews, or does some of it rub off on America, too?

In Ritual Bathhouses of the Jewish Orthodoxy, Children Are Systematically Abused"

http://www.vice.com/read/the-child-rape-assembly-line-0000141-v20n11

" Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg—who is 63 with a long, graying beard—recently sat down with me to explain what he described as a “child-rape assembly line” among sects of fundamentalist Jews. He cleared his throat. “I’m going to be graphic,” he said.

A member of Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidim fundamentalist branch of Orthodox Judaism, Nuchem designs and repairs mikvahs in compliance with Torah Law. The mikvah is a ritual Jewish bathhouse used for purification. Devout Jews are required to cleanse themselves in the mikvah on a variety of occasions: women must visit following menstruation, and men have to make an appearance before the High Holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Many of the devout also purify themselves before and after the act of sex, and before the Sabbath.

On a visit to Jerusalem in 2005, Rabbi Rosenberg entered into a mikvah in one of the holiest neighborhoods in the city, Mea She’arim. “I opened a door that entered into a schvitz,” he told me. “Vapors everywhere, I can barely see. My eyes adjust, and I see an old man, my age, long white beard, a holy-looking man, sitting in the vapors. On his lap, facing away from him, is a boy, maybe seven years old. And the old man is having anal sex with this boy.”"

...

"In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israel and London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant. The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figures of male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, are mostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assault perpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors for Justice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abuse victims, thinks the real number is higher. “From anecdotal evidence, we’re looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite of passage.”"

...

" According to Ben, the ultra-Orthodox community has never been as repressive as it is today. The repression, as he describes it, stems from the burden of having too many children. Huge families are encouraged: every child born to a Hasid is seen as “a finger in the eye of Hitler.” Ben also told me that the average family size among Williamsburg Hasidim is nine, and that some families include more than 15 children."

How are Orthodox Jews in comparison with secular Jews on the National Question and immigration?

The Orthodox community produces secular Jews. Secular Jews have low birth rates and don't sustain their numbers on their own. Orthodox Jews have high birth rates and produce a surplus population that inevitably leaves the Orthodox community and becomes secular, adopting and promoting secular views.

And the notion that Jews in Wall Street and San Fran are losing their Jewish identity is hilarious. The nature of the identity has changed--more historical than religious--, but the likes of Brin and Blankfein are profoundly Jewish.

I think the Orthodox Jews are more conservative in the temperamental and political senses as well as the religious sense

That depends on your definition of conservative.

Orthodox Jews are Jewish nationalists. Their political views are shaped by their belief of "is it good for Jews?" They also live in highly self-segregated communities. They don't interact with the general population enough to relate to them.

"In Ritual Bathhouses of the Jewish Orthodoxy, Children Are Systematically Abused"

http://www.vice.com/read/the-child-rape-assembly-line-0000141-v20n11

"In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israel and London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant. The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figures of male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, are mostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assault perpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors for Justice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abuse victims, thinks the real number is higher. “From anecdotal evidence, we’re looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite of passage.”"

Are guys like Bernanke or Blankfein Jewish though? Amy Chuas kids do NOT consider themselves Jewish. Would Zuckerbergs? And while a 17% dropout rate is substantial, secular Jews tend to have even higher defacto rates with outmarriage or no kids.

And this is the Mormon argument. Victory by fertility. Quantity having its own quality as Stalin said. Muslims worldwide claim this also.

Which is true short of nuclear war. Ask the Japanese how mass fertility faired against nukes.

Highly educated, smart people can and have killed in masses greater than fertility.

Note the dependency on welfare. Not particularly wise. Welfare is not eternal any more than Romes bread and circuses were.

Our correspondant, Josh Nathan-Kazis seems genuinely amazed at Orthodox Jewish creativity in raising seven kids. Other than the government handouts, these innovations are 1920 revisited. Large families are so rare outside of the Orthodox that all this seems amazing to him.

Speaking of Rabbi Eliashev, Now that he has died, the moderates and liberals are agitating in Israel to eliminate one of the two Chief Rabbis (and associated infrastructure), and have only one Chief Rabbi of all the Jews.

"I think the Orthodox Jews are more conservative in the temperamental and political senses as well as the religious sense. I believe they vote Republican more often than their secular counterparts as well."

They will often vote as their leaders instruct them to vote. When Hilary Clinton ran for Senator from NY in 2000 the word had apparently come from their leaders that they should vote for her, and I remember reading she won something like 98% of the vote in one of those communities north of NYC. Don't think this was because of any great seated love for the Clintons or the Democratic Party.

Did you read the newest report? the 27% figure refers to CHILDREN, OK? You ask "what are the numbers" - read the report that Steve referred to.

The Jews who are intermarrying are, pretty obviously, not children. The percentage of Jewish adults who not Orthodox is at least 80% of the Jewish adult population. This is acknowledged. The Pew report you reference is proof that this Non-Orthodox population is disappearing into the mainstream, not increasing.

The Forward article that referred to the organization that "helps" Orthodox Jews leave Orthodoxy is a sop to its secular readership. The number of Jews who leave Orthodoxy is really tiny.

Orthodoxy is truly a Sailerian example of affordable family formation, except that Sailer refers to low taxes and lots of land. I think that is only half the equation. You can have all the land in the world, and zero taxes (is that good?) but you won't have family formation if the attitudes of the society are hedonistic and anti-child.

You don't find any Heartistes in the Orthodox community, and you don't find any feminists.

I love these people who flame feminism and gay rights on Jews. Motes, beams....all this stuff is from the secularized Christianity of 19th century Evangelical Protestantism. Secularized Jews just caught a bad case of this particular flu because they were a small population without any natural defenses and it was against Judaism. Anything that was against Judaism, they were for.

Besides economizing and informal support networks, Orthodox communities rely on government aid programs to subsidize their child-heavy lifestyle. This is true, they even have more kids than Mexicans these days. Sometimes you will see of a Mexican with a 4th or 5th kid but they are starting to go more to 3 and less kids.

Non-orthodox Jews are assimilating and have a very low average birthrate, Luke. However, right now, they still make up a majority of the U.S. Jewish population. Births among the Orthodox are outpacing attrition, and if this keeps up, they will eventually displace non-Orthodox Jews as the majority. Non-Orthodox and Orthodox Jews are on different demographic trajectories.

Is this a positive movement for jews we think of as "regular jews", or not? I have a Hungarian friend in London who told me that he hates going to Israel, because Orthodox assholes throw rocks at people trying to go to the movies or have an evening out on Friday night.

"The nature of the identity has changed--more historical than religious--, but the likes of Brin and Blankfein are profoundly Jewish."

This. If one listens to Fauxman and others of his ilk re Jewish demographics, Jews in America should disappear in a few years. Instead, their public profile is spreading and mutating. Not to mention they do not even count all those partial Jews caused by "marrying out," most of whom identify as Jews culturally. So their purported 2% of the population is actually quite a bit larger, although the influence on/control of the rest of society is still obscenely disproportionate.

according to pew http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/chapter-6-social-and-political-views/

orthodox jews lean 54% to 12% on the question of conservative or liberal- i.e. 54 % describe themselves as conservative versus 12 % that describe themselves as liberal .The corresponding numbers for american population at large is 38 to 21

Regarding the political sensibilities of Orthodox Jews, it's worth knowing that Orthodoxy divides into roughly two groups: "Ultra-Orthodox" and Modern Orthodox. The Ultra-Orthodox vote Republican in national elections because of moral issues such as partial-birth abortion and homosexual marriage. The Modern Orthodox generally, though not overwhelmingly, vote Democrat. Non-Orthodox denominations are thoroughly left-liberal Democrat. There's a direct correlation between degree of religious observance and political affiliation. The most "Jewish" Jews -- the more religious "Ultra-Orthodox" -- would agree with most of the content here. (I put "Ultra-Orthodox" in quotes because they don't call themselves that; that's what professors and journalists call them.)

The most "Jewish" Jews -- the more religious "Ultra-Orthodox" -- would agree with most of the content here.

Not really. For the most observant Jews, nothing matters more than what is best for their specific Jewish community. In NYC, one portion of the Satmar sect currently split by an internecine feud endorsed the liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. There are points of intersection between their beliefs and the beliefs of conservative Christians, but I would expect far less concern about immigration than is shown by Mr. Sailer or most commenters here.

Some argue that there's a major problem with abuse in the Orthodox community:

http://www.vice.com/read/the-child-rape-assembly-line-0000141-v20n11

"The child sex abuse crisis in ultra-Orthodox Judaism, like that in the Catholic Church, has produced its share of shocking headlines in recent years. In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israel and London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant. The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figures of male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, are mostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assault perpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors for Justice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abuse victims, thinks the real number is higher. “From anecdotal evidence, we’re looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite of passage.”"

The ultras truly are odd politically. They are heavy users of government subsidies and every couple years get nabbed for big welfare and education fraud.

That being said, the ultras are still warring with the Maskilim--the Jewish assimilationists (liberals)--who have been trying to break down the rabbinic command-and-control system that Jews devised over a thousand years ago to stay separate from The Nations.

Hence they are more comfortable with rule by conservative goyim who will never know their secrets or internal politics, and who are rather easily manipulated, than by Liberals/Democrats who will threaten their cultural cohesion.

In short, they know their kids will never, ever become Catholics, but they might be seduced into becoming a wealthy Reform Jewish dentist ... And if they do turn into Reform Jews, their grandchildren will mongrelize with Christians.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews are undoubtedly less concerned about Mexican immigration than we are, though many are just as concerned about black crime. The reason I think they'd fit in decently here is that they're on our side with regard to "affordable family formation."

So, let me get this straight- successful Euro white people having three or four kids (whom they can cover the expenses for themselves) is something bad that we should discourage but welfare addict Orthodox having 7 kids is a great thing? Why isn't this getting even the mildly negative image in the press that black welfare addicts with three kids gets? You never hear at all about these guys.

If we define a Jew for the purposes of this discussion as someone whose parents and grandparents are Ashkenazi on both sides of the family, then, yes, clearly, the ultra-orthodox are a rapidly growing percentage of that population. What I want to know is the size of that population and whether it is sinking in numbers, and if so how fast? That is the real test of assimilation..

Are guys like Bernanke or Blankfein Jewish though? Amy Chuas kids do NOT consider themselves Jewish. Would Zuckerbergs?

Give us a break. Self-deception on this point is more the rule than the exception.

Look at what Charles Silberman wrote about Abraham Heschel, the eponym of the $34,500-per-year school mentioned in this very blog post. Regarding Heschel's reaction to the war in 1967:

"I had not known how deeply Jewish I was!" This was the response, not of some newcomer to Judaism or casual devotee but of the man many, myself included, consider the greatest Jewish spiritual leader of our time. Others made the same discovery about themselves. "I must confess surprise over the depth of my own feelings," Rabbi Richard Rubenstein , another distinguished theologian, wrote. "There are unconscious depths to the phenomenon of Jewishness which even those of us who have spent our lives in its study cannot fathom."

"The Orthodox community produces secular Jews. Secular Jews have low birth rates and don't sustain their numbers on their own. Orthodox Jews have high birth rates and produce a surplus population that inevitably leaves the Orthodox community and becomes secular, adopting and promoting secular views..."

MacDonald argues that this has operated over the long term of hundreds or thousands of years, with an outer layer of the community always disintegrating into the surrounding peoples while a core regenerates.

Are guys like Bernanke or Blankfein Jewish though? Amy Chuas kids do NOT consider themselves Jewish. Would Zuckerbergs? And while a 17% dropout rate is substantial, secular Jews tend to have even higher defacto rates with outmarriage or no kids.

Secular Jews have much lower rates of "outmarriage" than white "gentiles." I mean, just look at that word, "outmarriage." There's a bait and switch there. We're not talking about religious people - they're secular, agnostic, atheistic, etc. We're talking about an ethnic group. Nobody even knows what the "outmarriage" rate is for equivalent ethnic groups like German-Americans, French-Americans, American-Americans, etc., because nobody even cares enough to keep track. Jewish "outmarriage" = white people marrying white people.

That being said, the ultras are still warring with the Maskilim--the Jewish assimilationists (liberals)--who have been trying to break down the rabbinic command-and-control system that Jews devised over a thousand years ago to stay separate from The Nations.

It's interesting how often one sees the manifestations of traditional despotic Judaism in secular and non-Orthodox Jews. Gun-grabbing is a despotic "liberal" endeavor, and Jews are the vanguard there. Speech codes and criminalization of hate speech is a despotic "liberal" endeavor, and Jews are the vanguard there. Political correctness, too. They're BFFs with Israel, nuff said on that one. Big gov't, ditto.

>> Is anyone else allowed to have their own cities and villages?

Off the top of my head.... the Amish. Let's see who else.

you could do it, if you did it. WN retreats have all only been publicity stunts. At least, so far.

You make a good point. From what little I know of the Amish, they got their perks by being willing to go to jail for them.

Regarding the political sensibilities of Orthodox Jews, it's worth knowing that Orthodoxy divides into roughly two groups: "Ultra-Orthodox" and Modern Orthodox. The Ultra-Orthodox vote Republican in national elections because of moral issues such as partial-birth abortion and homosexual marriage."

I find that difficult to believe. The "ultra-orthodox" really care about the goyim aborting thier babies? I doubt it. Thier vote is probably won or lost entirely on the issue of Israel. G.W. Bush only got about 30% of the orthodox vote in 2000, when he was cosying up to muslims, and talking down foreign interventionism. Then, in 2004, he got 70% of the orthodox vote. Obviously, his (stated) ideas about foreign policy had changed alot by then. John (we'll have to stay in the mid-east for 100 years) McCain got 80% of the orthodox vote in 2008.

What I want to know is the size of that population and whether it is sinking in numbers...

It's hard to get a sense of that from Pew, in part because their definition of Jewishness is more expansive than yours. I'm a non-religious Ashkenazi, and my sense is that the non-Orthodox Jewish community is experiencing slow numeric decline. Intermarriage doesn't always lead to numeric decline if the children are raised Jewish, although your definition of Jewishness and the Orthodox one would consider many of those children non-Jewish regardless of self-identification. Low birth rate is less ambiguous. Non-Orthodox Jews have very low birthrates, and as the older generation dies off, a population decline should reveal itself in future population surveys.

MacDonald argues that this has operated over the long term of hundreds or thousands of years, with an outer layer of the community always disintegrating into the surrounding peoples while a core regenerates.

Yes, this is the general historical pattern. The "outer layer" enters the gentile world and promotes a liberal, universalistic, cosmopolitan ethic among the gentile world that helps mitigate intolerance and discrimination against the community as a whole, while the core retains a conservative, particularistic, cohesive ethic that maintains the group.

Yes, this is the general historical pattern. The "outer layer" enters the gentile world

Only since Napoleon has this been possible at all among Ashkenazim, and only in Western Europe where there were few Jews (most were still dwelling in shtetls in Eastern Europe until the end of the 19th century). Before Napoleon, there was no possibility of assimilation except through conversion, and the converts did not generally maintain relations with their traditionally relgious Jewish families. There are a few cases, such as that of Johannes Pfefferkorn, where converted Jews actively aided their persecution.

"Yes, this is the general historical pattern. The 'outer layer' enters the gentile world"

--

Only since Napoleon has this been possible at all among Ashkenazim, and only in Western Europe where there were few Jews (most were still dwelling in shtetls in Eastern Europe until the end of the 19th century). Before Napoleon, there was no possibility of assimilation except through conversion....

There have been numerous attempts to start white nationalist communities in the northwest. Every one of them crashed and burned after one generation because they attracted burned out low IQ losers who do nothing but complain and whine and moan about how unfair it all is. I suspect you are one of them.

On the other hand, there are thriving, flourishing communities of Amish, Mormons, etc. I'd ask you to think of it, but you clearly have no capacity for rational thought.

Limiting membership to whites, nitwit. You try it, and see how far you get.

"On the other hand, there are thriving, flourishing communities of Amish, Mormons, etc."

And they self-identify - and organize - on the basis of religion, not race. Again - idiot - if whites in this country try to self-segregate explicity on the basis of race they get smashed. Even those white nationalist communities you mentioned, full of losers as they are, instantly attract the attention of federal law-enforcement agencies, who thereafter just won't leave them alone.

"I'd ask you to think of it, but you clearly have no capacity for rational thought."

You are not engaging in a dispassionate argument based on rational though. You are pushing an agenda, asshole.

That wasn't the same commenter. The second commenter was a different Anonymous disputing the comment made by the first Anonymous.

And the second anonymous -- rather obviously, I thought! -- contradicted himself by saying that Jews could not spin off from the Jewish core before the time of Napoleon. Then he said that, before Napoleon, there was no possibility of assimilation except through conversion, which would constitute what he just said was impossible. That's a contradiction.

The first anonymous commenter stated that the "general pattern of history" was that Jews who assimilated "promotes a liberal, universalistic, cosmopolitan ethic among the gentile world that helps mitigate intolerance and discrimination." My argument is that this is not the general pattern of history. First, the avenues for assimilation were limited to conversion everywhere in Europe before the time of Napoleon, and the number of people who did that (again, pre-Napoleon) when not under duress was small. Those Jews who converted didn't maintain the kind of ties with the Jewish community that Reform Jews do today, e.g. Johannes Pfefferkorn who was actively hostile to it. The only large scale conversion of Jews to Christianity occurred in Iberia under duress. There, the insincere conversos sometimes tried to maintain ties to the Jewish community but were persecuted by the Inquisition for doing so. And after the expulsion of 1492, there was no "inner core" Jewish community in Iberia for them to mitigate discrimination against.

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